He’s not in my memory, which means he’s not in my future.
When I finally accept it, the truth stings. But there’s no time to dwell on it, and there are only two choices: I can remind myself about someone who is not a part of my life, or I can leave him out of my notes to save myself from going through this all over again tomorrow.
This late, with my mind just minutes from “reset,” it doesn’t seem much of a choice at all. I grit my teeth and grip the pen and do what I have to do.
I lie to myself.
3
The house is still; it’s early.
I check out the bedroom, trying to pinpoint differences between two nearly identical pictures: the one I remember from tomorrow and the scene before me now.
There’s an empty mug with a used tea bag wound around the handle on a coaster on the desk. There’s a sweatshirt hanging over the edge of the hamper like it’s trying to get out. Tomorrow, the mug will be gone. There will be textbooks on the desk; the hamper will be empty.
I hold a note that explains what I’ve missed. Well, at least the highlights.
10/17 (Sun.)
Outfit:
—Supersoft boy’s hoodie (Fri. note said I got it from the reject pile at school)
—Black leggings
—Sherpa boots
School:
—Bring Band-Aids for almost-healed blister
—Bring yoga pants, T-shirt for gym (had to borrow awful clothes from Page Fri.)
—CELL PHONE (Mom has it in the car)
Other stuff:
—J was in L.A. this weekend w/her dad
—Avoid Page this week
—Doctor this morning (tripped Fri. in PE)
I set aside the note and read through similar messages from the past week, paying particular attention to Friday’s comments on clothes and school stuff. Then, still feeling like I’m walking into the world partially blind, I haul myself from bed and start the day.
On the way to the doctor’s office, Mom takes Hudson Avenue, which cuts through the city cemetery. At the intersection of Hudson and Washington, we get caught at the light.
“We’re going to be late,” my mom mutters under her breath. She drums her hands on the wheel, and I wonder if she’s missing a meeting to drive me.
I loll my head to the right side and scan the graves. They stand in formation, lines running straight away from me and then curving slightly in the distance.
The light turns green, and as the car speeds up, a movement catches my eye. Two people, a man and a boy, stop before a tombstone. In my rational brain, I know they’re visiting a lost loved one. Nothing scary. But something about the mourners makes my shoulders tense and sends a shot of electricity through my body. I shiver in my seat; my mother doesn’t notice.
“Do you remember what you’re going to say when the doctor asks how this happened?” Mom asks, interrupting my thoughts.
“Yes,” I reply, grateful for the distraction. “I tripped over a ball in gym class.”
“Good,” she says as we turn into the parking lot. She finds a space and we rush inside. We clear the lobby quickly and then ride the elevator up two floors in silence. All the while, my mind is still in the graveyard.
4
“Doctor’s appointment?”
“Yep,” I say, smiling my most innocent smile at Henne Fassbinder, school secretary and obvious lover of cats.
She frowns in response as she types something into my computer file with nails so long they’d have to open a soda can sideways.
I hop a little, hoping she’ll hurry up. I want to get to my locker before class lets out—fewer opportunities for mistakes that way.
“In a hurry?” Henne asks.
“Nope,” I say, trying another smile. She frowns again.
Finally, Ms. Fassbinder finishes typing and shoves back in her swivel chair. She opens a cabinet and easily locates the file with my name on it and then inserts the note my mom wrote just minutes ago.
I assume that Ms. Fassbinder will wait until I’m gone to compare today’s handwriting with that from previous days.
Turning around, I check the industrial clock mounted on the wall behind me. It’s 9:52 AM. The bell will ring in three minutes, and I’m nervous about that, for some reason. I’ve missed PE, study hall, and Pre-calc. Not bad.
Finally, the secretary offers me a hall pass and I take it, but not before noticing the tiny decorative cats affixed to her nails. It looks like they were innocently walking through bright red cement when it set and trapped them forever.
Poor cats.
I hoist my bag onto my right shoulder and bolt from the office. I speed walk across the commons—ignoring the “badly bruised” ankle noted on my doctor’s excuse—and start up the main hallway bordering the library. Halfway there, the end-of-third-period bell rings and I’m swimming upstream through distracted students, hand-holding couples, and ironclad cliques.
I try to avoid eye contact with everyone, but sometimes it’s impossible. Page Thomas, looking like a D-list celebrity on her stylist’s day off, approaches from the opposite direction and waves at me with what I consider to be a little too much enthusiasm. For a beat, I have no idea why she’s so happy to see me. I shift my bag to my left arm so that I can cordially wave back as we pass.
Then I remember.
Soon she will corner me and ask me to set her up with Brad, from math. Ugh. Who am I, Cupid?
Where the main hall intersects with the pathways to the math and science wings, Carley Lynch and her circle have the hallway blocked. They’re all in black and red uniforms, and a few squad members are actually taking notes as Carley speaks.
As I pass by, I notice a little Tigers mascot temporary tattoo high on Carley’s perfect right cheekbone. I imagine her staring in her mirror this morning before school, trying to get the tattoo just so, which makes me giggle to myself.
Carley sees my expression and her eyes narrow. She makes a show of scrutinizing my outfit, then proclaims, “Hey, loser, props on getting yourself into a semidecent outfit today. Did you buy it at Kmart?”
Clueless as to where my clothes come from or why Carley hates me so much, I feel a lump rise in my throat. Even though I have the benefit of knowing that I’ll grow more beautiful each day—and that Carley will never look better than she does right now—the comment stings. Just when I think I might lose it in front of the cheerleader cult, someone grabs my hand.
“Let’s go,” Jamie says softly before pulling me around the squad to my locker.
“I don’t get it,” I say quietly. Jamie shakes her head as she opens my locker door for me. I unload my book bag and take deep breaths in an effort to brush it off. While I do, Jamie leans against the locker next to mine, looking alarmingly like a hooker.
“Hey, Ma,” Jason Rodriguez says to Jamie as he passes. “Nice legs.”
“Thanks,” she says back with a twinkle in her eyes.
I look at my friend, thinking that I both admire her and worry about her, despite knowing how things will turn out. Jamie is effortlessly surfer-girl pretty, even though she’ll never hit the waves. Her chin-length dark blonde hair looks like she washed it in salt water and then let it dry in the warm sun, and her eyes are ocean green. She’s stick-model thin, tanned, and sporting bare legs under a very short skirt with no tights. In October.
Down the hall, Jason high-fives his friend; I don’t even want to know if it was about Jamie.
Jamie will always be that girl: the one boys love to flirt with—not date—and girls love to hate. And I will always be that girl’s only friend.
“How did it go at the doctor?” Jamie asks. “I can’t believe you fell again. You’re such a klutz.”
“Ha-ha,” I say sarcastically. “The doctor was fine. He didn’t ask much so I didn’t have to lie.”
“That’s good.”
“Yeah,” I say, retrieving my Spanish book. “How’s your day?”
“The worst!” Jamie begins as I slam my locke
r shut. “I got detention.”
“What for?”
“We had a History test and I didn’t study, so I gave Ryan Greene’s paper a tiny peek, and all of a sudden, Mr. Burgess was standing over me. Anyway, detention starts at the ungodly hour of seven in the morning, and I have to go for like two weeks. Doesn’t that seem a little unfair to you?”
Not waiting for me to respond, she continues. “I don’t even know where detention is. I guess I better figure that out before seven tomorrow.”
Jamie is quiet for a second, and then something pops into her brain.
“Hey!” she says, hitting me softly on the arm. “Why didn’t you warn me about Mr. Burgess? About getting caught? You had to see that one coming.”
“I guess I didn’t,” I say, shrugging. “It wasn’t in my note this morning. Sorry.”
“That’s okay,” Jamie says. “After tomorrow, I’ll no longer be a detention virgin.”
We laugh, but there’s a pit in my stomach. This won’t be the last time Jamie will see the inside of the detention hall. However, it will be the first time she’ll flirt with the detention hall monitor, Mr. Rice, and the beginning of a sordid affair that will end in his divorce and Jamie’s being sent to an all-girls’ camp this summer to learn the difference between right and wrong, with the help of poetry, pottery, and Jesus.
I shake it off and Jamie rattles on while we move toward Spanish. We’re nearly the same height today because I’m in high boots, but she walks taller, with confidence, and meets the eyes of passing students. I watch their shoes as they go by, imagining who might be wearing them.
White cross-trainers with laces and swoosh that exactly match the school’s crimson?
Too easy.
Cheerleader.
Adidas tennis shoes with athletic socks?
Male soccer player in the off-season (noticed the hairy legs).
Are those bedroom slippers? Come on.
Ooh, here come some cute red boots. They’re Western meets modern, and I want to borrow them. Who could it be? Maybe next year’s homecoming queen, Lisa Something? She’s trendy.
Unable to stand the suspense, I look up to find that I’m wrong. The girl in the boots is Hannah Wright. I can’t help but smile, because Hannah’s future is bright: in just a few years, she’ll be a country superstar.
Too bad I can’t tell her.
Back to my game, I see brown Converse All Stars coming toward me—actually head-on toward me—but before impact or identification, Jamie tugs me out of the way. We’ve made it to the Spanish corridor.
“Were you playing that stupid foot game again?” she asks, dropping my arm.
I shrug in response.
“Well, you should watch where you’re going. You almost got run down by that weirdo,” she says as we walk into Ms. Garcia’s classroom.
“What weirdo?” I ask, intrigued. This morning’s note mentioned nothing about a weirdo.
“That weird guy you were talking to during the fire drill. Jake. No, Jack. Lance? Whatever. You know, the guy who just moved here. He looked like he wanted to talk to you just now, but you were too busy looking at his feet. It doesn’t matter, because you shouldn’t be associating with weirdos. You’re already weird enough as is.”
Jamie turns and gives me a silly grin before the bell rings and ends our conversation.
When Ms. Garcia grabs a dry-erase marker and begins writing today’s class agenda, I lean over and whisper gently to my best friend.
“Jamie, you look pretty today.”
“Thanks, London,” she says with a soft smile before turning in her seat toward Anthony Olsen, who is very openly eyeballing her legs.
5
It wasn’t a dream: I wasn’t asleep.
Almost, but not quite.
There, in that space between resting and REM, the image slammed into my head like a freight train. Now I’m sitting up straight, blinking furiously as if that will make my eyes adjust more quickly, breathing heavily, and sweating even though the heater’s turned down low, as it will be every night for as long as I live here.
Like that gory photo in my Anatomy book that I’ll encounter in a few months and can’t stop thinking about already, the memory won’t go away.
I want to walk down the hall and crawl into bed with my mom.
Instead, I try to self-soothe.
I take at least five deep, calming breaths, maybe more. I identify every dark shape in the room as nonthreatening. Finally, I burrow back inside the still-warm cocoon between two oversized pillows that form an upside-down V at the top of my bed.
Feeling a little better, I trick my brain into thinking about other things. The annoying doctor this morning; Jamie flirting with Jason; Jamie flirting with Anthony. White shoes, red boots, silly slippers, black shoes, brown sneakers…
Wham!
My eyes are open wide once more.
I try shaking my head. I try thinking of the shoes again. I even try thinking of other unpleasant thoughts, like Jamie’s upcoming… situation.
Nothing works.
Exhaling loudly, I decide to let my mind go. Trying not to think about it is only making it worse.
I pull the blankets up to my chin and blink into the pitch-black bedroom.
And suddenly, I’m in a cemetery.
Being there makes me shiver now.
I’m at a funeral. At least I think I am.
I can’t distinguish much except for hazy black shapes that could be people, and neutral stone beyond them in every direction. In my nostrils: the unmistakable scent of fresh-cut grass. It could be 8:30 AM or 3:14 PM. It’s overcast: I can’t tell.
I don’t understand the scene, but it makes me feel heavy just the same.
And alone.
And afraid.
I consider whether to turn on the lamp and add details of this memory to today’s note—right underneath musings about the “weirdo” that Jamie mentioned—but, ultimately, I stay where I am.
It’s obvious that the mourners today triggered this particular memory. But knowing why doesn’t soften the blow of the harsh underlying reality.
I remember forward.
I remember forward, and forget backward.
My memories, bad, boring, or good, haven’t happened yet.
So, like it or not—and like it I don’t—I will remember standing in the fresh-cut grass with the black-clad figures surrounded by stone until I do it for real. I will remember the funeral until it happens—until someone dies.
And after that, it will be forgotten.
6
I’m early to study hall.
I changed out of my gym clothes quickly in order to dodge Page Thomas’s simple request, which is silly, because I remember when it’ll happen… not today. But still, I rushed. I skipped the pointless trip to my locker near the math corridor and, voilà! Here I am.
Early.
This must be out of character for me, because Ms. Mason is eyeing me like I’m something disgusting she’s been asked to ingest. I smile at her, and she looks away.
More students arrive. I take the Pre-calc. textbook and workbook from my bag, as well as a red mechanical pencil. Thankfully, none of the other students sit at my table, so I can spread out.
I begin the homework that this morning’s note said I neglected to do last night. The other students are chatting among themselves, getting in those last bits of gossip before the bell rings.
“We meet again,” says a smooth male voice out of nowhere.
I figure he’s talking to someone at the next table, but I look up from my work anyway.
Then I suck in my breath.
The boy standing there across the table, looking like he’s going to sit down with me, is flat-out gorgeous.
“Hi?” I say, more question than greeting.
“I didn’t know you had study hall this period,” the boy says, casually dropping his bag onto a chair and pulling out the one beside it. He sits down, his eyes never leaving mine.
Do I k
now him?
“Obviously,” I say back, which comes out sounding a little snippy because I’m preoccupied.
Am I in the right place?
I scan the faces of my classmates. Andy Bernstein. Check. Hannah Wright. Check.
Tomorrow is Wednesday, so today is Tuesday. Check.
Second period?
Yep, I just had PE.
The boy is talking again.
“… because after the fire drill I had to finish orientation, and it took up all of second period, too. But you weren’t here yesterday. Where were you?”
I’m tapping my pencil on my notebook now. This conversation is making me anxious. I think back to my notes before answering.
“At a doctor’s appointment,” I say, adding no additional clarification.
“Oh, sorry,” the boy says, glancing down at the table for a moment. “I didn’t mean to pry.”
He looks embarrassed. It’s cute.
“It’s okay,” I say, still tapping my pencil. “I tripped over a ball in gym. My mom thought my ankle was sprained.”
“Was it?”
“Nope, just bruised,” I say.
I’m tapping faster now.
He’s still looking right at me.
Right into me.
Seriously, do I know him?
“That’s good,” he says. The bell rings and we’re still staring at each other, him looking amused and me probably looking like I’m going to explode. At least that’s how I feel.
“You okay?” he asks, with the slightest nod in the direction of my furiously tapping pencil. The acknowledgment of my nervous energy makes me fumble; I lose my grip, and the pencil launches into the air and then falls onto the floor. Feeling like a complete idiot, I scoot back in my chair and bend over to retrieve it. I grab the pencil, and, on my way back up, I spy something interesting.